Flud launches enterprise application

Flud, which up until now has been known as a consumer tool for discovering and sharing news, announced this week it was launching a new enterprise version.

Flud CEO and co-founder Bobby Ghoshal said it seemed like a logical extension to take what has worked well on the consumer level to allow groups of consumers who like to read and share news with each other through a social layer--and bring that level of sharing to the enterprise.

"Businesses have many groups or teams of people who rely on each other to stay informed and these users are relegated to using email to share and consume important industry news--and email just downright sucks for consuming content. Since Flud has already built a socially-conscious platform for consumers to share news, we decided we could use the same model with added levels of security to solve the information sharing problems of businesses," Ghoshal explained.

He said that it wasn't as simple as repackaging the tool for enterprise users though because this audience has different requirements from consumers. Obviously the kinds are articles you share could says a lot about what you're working on and the focus of your company, so security is one area they needed to beef up, but that wasn't the only parts of the app that needed adjusting.

"Company content is sensitive and applications like Flud have a duty to safeguard what content gets created and shared privately. Next, you need a UI that appeals and makes sense to younger app-hungry 20-somethings all the way up to the 50 or 60-something C-level executives. Finally, you need to enable businesses to make informed decisions by giving them great data. Flud has built a dashboard for businesses to assess the heartbeat of the content that gets shared within their company. They'll know which stories resonate with their employees, who their most influential employees are, as well as data on when their employees like to read," he said.

Flud has launched the enterprise version of the product in 50 companies in the U.S. and Europe. Ghoshal says they plan to work out the kinks in this early release before aiming for wider distribution. "We have quietly launched our product and have seen a few thousand businesses sign up. A large percentage of these companies are Fortune 500 businesses. We've hand-picked 50 companies to launch into during our early access period. Once we perfect the UI and the on-boarding, we are likely to see a surge in businesses sign up to use Flud," he said.

Moving to the enterprise gives Flud a way to monetize the product moving forward. "One of the great things about servicing the enterprise is that we can monetize without ads or coupons. We really dislike that model because it doesn't solve a user need. We wanted a model that solved the needs of the customer to the extent that the customer would actually pay to use the product. We've privately signed on 50 companies to use Flud, this includes paid and free engagements. We will eventually monetize Flud on a freemium per-seat payment model, it is a model that the enterprise understands and is comfortable with. Consumers will still be able to use our platform to read news for free without ads," he explained.

Flud has created a nice consumer-level app and if it can evolve into an enterprise one, it can use the freemium model Ghoshal eluded to where consumers get a free app and a certain number of enterprise users get the paid one. If it works, the company makes money and everybody wins.

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